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Smart News

Can Stress Really Make Your Hair Fall Out?

It’s a common cartoon trope, but it’s actually true, in a way.

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Crowds Help Robots Repair Damaged Coral Reefs

A team of Scottish scientists hopes to raise $107,000 to build coral reef repairing robots

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Dogs May Live Longer If They Are “Fixed”

A new study shows spayed dogs live a year and a half longer, on average, than their fertile counterparts

Athletes and Movie Stars Really Do Live Harder, Die Younger

Famous athletes and other performers are more likely to die young than their famous business, political, or academic counterparts.

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Why Rodents Can’t Throw Up, In Case You Were Wondering

A combination of physiology and neurology prevents these hairy little guys from being able to upchuck

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Tylenol Fights Headaches…and Existential Angst?

Existential angst and physical pain may both be located in the same part of the brain; Tylenol may be able to help with both.

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Chronic Stress is Harmful, But Short-Term Stress Can Help

The more researchers learn about stress, the more it seems there are two distinct ways we experience it: or short-lived stess, and long-term stress.

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Some Icelanders Are Accidentally Dating a Relative and Now There’s an App for That

Dating your relatives by accident is a common enough problem for Icelanders that there is now an app to help people avoid it

How a Vietnamese Refugee Built the Multi-Million Dollar Sriracha Hot Sauce Empire

Rooster sauce made $60 million last year alone, and revenue is only growing along with its popularity

Getting in Touch After a Disaster

Before cellphones, it was much harder to get a hold of loved ones, but it was also less likely you knew they were in danger at all

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Your Meat is Probably Packing Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs

Antibiotic resistant bacteria is rampant in grocery store meat, and it doesn’t seem to be going away

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The Northeastern United States Gets To See a Rocket Launch Today

At 5 p.m. today, a huge rocket will blast off from a base in Virginia

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What Was the First Book Ever Ordered on Amazon.com?

Amazon wasn’t always a multi-billion dollar company. Their first non-internal order came in 1995, and it was a science book

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With New Ban, No More Lions and Tigers and Bears at Circuses

Any animal not normally domesticated in the UK will no longer appear on stage

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Dark Lightning Is Just One of the Crazy Types of Lightning You’ve Never Heard Of

Dark Lightning is not the only weird form of lightning you’ve probably never heard of

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Trees Make Noises, and Some of Those Sounds Are Cries for Help

Knowing what kinds of noises trees in distress produce means researchers may be able to target those most in need of emergency waterings during droughts

The Earliest Stop Motion Animations Are Weirdly Wonderful

These animations remind us that you don’t need Pixar’s budget to make something wonderful

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You’re Lying to Yourself About How Good Your Future Will Be

In a psychology experiment, people assumed that bad things would not happen to them in the future, but that those bad things could happen to their friends

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No, You Can’t Officially Rename a Planet. But No One Can Stop You From Trying

This contest to name exoplanets isn’t official. But does that really matter?

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The Secret to Biofuels Might Be Hidden in Poop

A fungus that grows on manure and breaks down the leftover plant material could be a key clue for biofuel researchers

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